Please join WITA as we examine this new form of taxation and the nexus with trade law and policy with leading experts:
Grant Aldonas, Split Rock International, and former U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade
Pamela Olson, PWC, and former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Tax Policy
Moderator: Meredith Broadbent, CSIS and former Chairman of the International Trade Commission
Grant D. Aldonas is the principal managing director of Split Rock International, a Washington, D.C.-based trade and investment consulting firm he founded in 2006. Mr. Aldonas also serves as an adjunct professor of law and member of the board of directors of the Institute for International Economic Law at Georgetown University’s Law Center, and is a member of the board of directors of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation.
Prior to launching Split Rock, Mr. Aldonas had a distinguished career in law, business, and government focusing on international trade and investment. He was, from 2001-2005, the U.S. Under Secretary of Commerce for International Trade. In that capacity, Mr. Aldonas served as “America’s Salesman,” promoting U.S. exports globally and managing a federal agency with a budget of $350 million and 2,400 employees in 80 countries worldwide.
Before assuming his position as Under Secretary of Commerce, Mr. Aldonas served as Chief International Trade Counsel to the Senate Finance Committee, the top trade policy position in Congress. During his tenure on Capitol Hill, Congress enacted several historic trade bills, including the Trade and Development Act of 2000 and legislation normalizing trade relations with China following its accession to the World Trade Organization.
Mr. Aldonas was a partner with Miller & Chevalier, a Washington, D.C. law firm, prior to joining the Finance Committee. He built a broad-based practice advising many of the world’s leading corporations on international trade, investment, government contracts, taxation and international litigation. While in private practice, Mr. Aldonas also served, in 1995, as Counsel to the Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform and, in 1996, as an Adviser to the Commission on U.S.-Pacific Trade and Investment. He was also a leader in the American Bar Association’s Section of International Practice, serving as the Chair of the ABA’s Task Force on Multilateral Investment Agreements and as Vice Chair of its Committees on Trade and Foreign Investment.
Mr. Aldonas began his career as a diplomat, serving in the U.S. Foreign Service, from 1980-1984, and as a trade negotiator in the Office of the United States Trade Representative, from 1984-1985.
He is a native of Minnesota and received his B.A. in International Relations in 1975 and his J.D. in 1979 from the University of Minnesota. He is married with three children.
Pamela Olson is the US Deputy Tax Leader and Washington National Tax Services (WNTS) Practice Leader of PwC. In this role, she leads a team of former senior government officials, policy advisers and prominent law-firm partners.
Prior to joining PwC, Ms. Olson was Assistant Secretary for Tax Policy at the US Department of the Treasury and head of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom’s Washington Tax Practice. She has significant experience representing clients in a broad range of matters—including IRS controversies; private-letter ruling requests, proposed regulations, and other administrative guidance; and in Congressional investigations. She regularly advises clients on tax and Social Security reform, legislative matters and the structuring of transactions.
Ms. Olson received her B.A., M.B.A., and J.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Meredith M. Broadbent, a Republican of Virginia, was nominated to the USITC by President Barack Obama on November 8, 2011, and confirmed by the U.S. Senate on August 2, 2012. She was sworn in as a member of the Commission on September 10, 2012, for a term expiring on June 16, 2017. She served as Chairman of the Commission from June 17, 2014, through June 16, 2016.
Commissioner Broadbent held the William M. Scholl Chair in International Business at the Center for Strategic and International Studies from October 2010 until her USITC appointment.
From 2003 to 2008, she served as Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Industry, Market Access, and Telecommunications. In that position, she was responsible for developing U.S. policy that affected trade in industrial goods, telecommunications, and e-commerce. She led the U.S. negotiating team for the Doha Round negotiations to reduce tariff and nontariff barriers on industrial goods and successfully concluded an innovative plurilateral trade agreement with the European Union, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan. She also directed an administration initiative to reform the Generalized System of Preferences program for developing countries.
From 2009 to 2010, she was a Trade Advisor at the Global Business Dialogue, a multinational business association focused on international trade and investment issues.
Earlier in her career, Commissioner Broadbent served as a senior professional staff member on the Republican staff of the Committee on Ways and Means of the U.S. House of Representatives. In that position, she drafted and managed major portions of the Trade and Development Act of 2000, legislation to authorize normal trade relations with China, and the Trade Act of 2002, which included trade promotion authority and the Andean Trade Promotion and Drug Eradication Act.
Prior to that, she served as professional staff for the House Ways and Means Trade Subcommittee, where she was instrumental in the development and House passage of the implementing bills for the North American Free Trade Agreement and Uruguay Round Agreements.
Commissioner Broadbent holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in history from Middlebury College and a Master of Business Administration degree from the George Washington University School of Business and Public Management.
Commissioner Broadbent is originally from Cleveland, Ohio. She has two sons, Charles and William Riedel, and resides in McLean, Virginia.